The present invention relates to a device for preparing and issuing tickets, especially travel tickets.
The invention concerns a machine which can prepare tickets, especially travel tickets, most often having part of the information printed, especially by thermal printing, and also preferably having information recorded on a magnetic track. Such machines should prepare a complete ticket in response to the information fed in by the user relating for example to its destination, the class and the tariff, and issue it after payment of the corresponding price, this payment being effected by cash or bank or other card.
Such machines are often installed in public places, such as railroad stations, subway stations, etc. Moreover, the number of uses of such a machine in a day is high and a fault in operation is very costly. They must be rugged and reliable.
In the case of some travel tickets, the face value of the tickets can be very high. It is, thus, important that the physical medium serving for preparing these tickets should not be capable of being stolen, whether by users or by maintenance personnel for the machines, with a view to making counterfeit tickets.
It will also be understood that, with multi-service machines, it is necessary to use several media for preparing the tickets, for example to prepare subway tickets, train tickets, or tickets for the Regional Express Network. It is, thus, necessary that the same machine should be able to prepare these different tickets. It is also desirable that such machines should be as compact as possible so that they can easily be located in suitable public places and in order to reduce their cost.